nstances, after receiving the kindest treatment, return to their homes
conveying such information to guerillas as enables these prowlers to
penetrate through by-roads and seize animals and straggling soldiers. As
a precaution against such annoyances, a very judicious arrangement was
made last winter by the provost marshal general of the Army of the
Potomac. He established certain points on the picket line at which
traffic might be conducted, and forbade admission to citizens. Some
rigorous system like this is very necessary.

The social life of camps is, however, the topic of chief interest. The
question is often asked, Is the life of a soldier demoralizing? The
answer must be, 'Yes,' but not for the reasons generally supposed. The
opportunities for vice and dissoluteness are really less than at home.
The hundred thousand men in an army use less liquor than the same number
of men in a city. In fact, liquor is nearly inaccessible to the soldier
when on the march. For other kinds of vice the temptations are few. The
demoralization arises from the terrible monotony of a prolonged camp,
which produces listlessness, indolence, and a devotion to small
amusements; deranges and reverses the whole system of active life, as it
is seen at home; renders a man uncouth; disqualifies soldiers for
anything else than the trade of war. To the officer in his tent and to
the soldier in his log hut, while the cold rains are beating without,
and the ground is knee deep with mud, there is a constant temptation to
find amusement in cards. Gambling thus becomes a pastime too generally
adopted. The books sent to the army are not always of the character best
adapted to the circumstances. Moral essays and tracts will not be very
eagerly sought for by men whose principal object is to kill time. The
reading matter needed is the kind afforded by the periodicals of the
day, unobjectionable novels, biographies, works of travel, etc.

Camp life has, however, its pleasures, and it must not be supposed that
all succumb to its enervating influences, or that any great number yield
themselves entirely to its demoralizing effects. The period of military
service among our volunteers is too short to permit its full influence
to be experienced, and the connections of our soldiers with their homes
too intimate to allow them to subside completely into the routine
veterans, whose social, mental, and moral nature is altogether lost and
absorbed in the new and artifi